Week 2--The Omnivore's Dilemma

Farmers' markets versus global food . The planet versus the pocketbook . More to consider about something as second nature as eating . Imagine calculating the food miles of your fish !
 
It's frightening when we ponder where we are headed . Will a time come when the world as we know it will cease to exist ? Or will we inhabit a virtual world - having , for example ,virtual meals - sort of a pill to have your fill ?

After reading the chapter "Big Organic" I was very suprised to learn that organic food isn't really all that organic. Yes, I understand that the way "organic" food is grown/treated differs from the way "industrial" food is grown/treated, but the flowery images of a wonderful farm life and fresh production seem in my opinion to be over done and essentially false advertising. Whole Food's puts so much effort into trying to convince their customers of their "organicness" when in reality its differences from industrial produced food aren't that great.

This whole time I thought the purpose of places like Whole Foods was to provide somewhat of a safe haven away from the industrialization of food production,but now I see otherwise. As Peter would ask, "How can you trust what Pollan says?", "What gives him the authority to make such claims?". In response I would have to point out the fact that not only did Pollan make the claim, he researched it; going to organic farms and relaying back to the reader the things he whitnessed. Overall I think the facts and examples he supplies as result of his findings alone poke a big hole in the framework of the organic food indutry. I understand that places like Whole Foods need to make profit just like any other big chain (or small chain for that matter), but I disagree with the way it goes about doing so.

In the selections we read this past week, the bit about Rosie the "free-range" chicken stuck with me the most.  At first it was just the way-too creepy fact that anyone in his or her right mind would think that giving a dinner a name would make it more appetizing and likely to sell.  As I said in class on Tuesday, the American people are disconnected from their food and its origins and have been for some time (we collectively deduced that it was from the invention of the can?).  The last thing we want is to think what we're eating ever lived, ever felt pain or happiness or slept or ran about or has any sort of connection to us whatsoever, besides nutritional value.  People and chairs from Ikea have names (what is up with that?!), not dinner.  It's just dinner, just chicken, not roasted Rosie with a slice of Fred on the side and some Preston Peas and Chloe Custard for dessert.

 And how is it that we've almost all been swayed this way, that we've all become ultra-sensitive?  Is it a strain of the poltically correct virus?  The years of getting our meat in geometric form, sealed neatly with cellophane, almost bloodless altered us.  There is no life in our meat, but we like it that way.  I've dissected two pigeons-- it isn't pretty.  But I love chicken.  I learned what type of birds have white meat, and why.  Yet I sit there, at my kitchen table, eating my white meat, often boneless chicken breast.  And when I think of the hassle it was to cook, the energy my mom put into it, the energy I put into helping her, it is nowehere near what it must have been, nowehere near the effort my two friends and I put into those pigeons.  We're babied by these clean cuts, pampered to a point.  We want animal rights, we want Rosie to go outdoors and join in all the chicken games and squak and bob her head about the grass...but we want Rosie in our grocery stores neatly packaged and precise so we can forget it's even Rosie.

But back to sway...since before I was born (1989. take that, 1990.), food's been presented to us that way.  In the reading for Thursday's class, Pollan wrote about fad diets, how in 2002 the Atkins story turned the nation's food ideology upside-down.  We dive head-first into what we're given, what's available.  As omnivores, we're both neophiles and neophobics, and these fads appeal to our neophilic (is that a word?) side.  And so we get Horace Fletcher, the Great Masticator, doomed to a suggestive nickname all because he thought he'd try chewing his food 100 times before swallowing it.  We're slaves to industrial food, Horace was a slave to excess mastication, the desperate folks who followed Atkins were slaves to, well, not carbs...in our natural desire to find new things to eat and new ways to eat, our fear of doing just that traps us in the new things we've come up with, at least for awhile (briefly in the case of fads, but not in industrial food).  Being omnivorous is truly a dilemma.

This summer for a few weeks I worked in Annapolis, MD as a nanny for my cousin's son. My cousin's wife would take me grocery shopping at Whole Foods and to me it was a supermarket heaven. In the cheese section alone I felt like I was in a whole new world. Every section I looked there were organic marvels and I felt like I had finally met the supermarket of all supermarkets.

When Pollan rips apart Whole Foods it made me so sad, because for not only me but for my family I felt like he was ripping apart what it stood for -- a life of organic and healthy food accessible close to home. For so long in my life my family has searched far and wide at organic health food stores for gluten-free tasty food (which is hard to come across), all  because my father is allergic to wheat. I told my mother about Whole Foods after I visited it in Annapolis and and she got excited about the fact that there was a whole supermarket that we could shop at and have a better chance of less migraines for my father, instead of a tiny health food store miles away. She and I felt like the search for his better food for not only my father but for our family was closer than ever before. When Pollan ripped apart the organic milk, it really crushed my ignorance of a perfect organic world. My family loves to buy organic milk because now my father (and me) are on the verge of being lactose and tolerant and we think organic milk is better to have for us. I guess to me it was always okay if the label said organic because I had nothing else to compare it to. Now even though it might say organic I feel untrusting of it. To me Pollan has made me nervous to walk into a supermarket now because I am afraid that it will crush my hopes for a perfect gluten-free and yummy meal at home. 

--Leigh 

How is human hunting a matter of symbiosis? OR rather how is "organically" raised cattles a matter of symbiosis. Are we and the cattles similar organisms? is there mutualism involved? We raise the cattles then we kill them. It is not part of the natural food chain and it does not cycle back in the wild. 

When a wolf eats a deer, it's following the food chain, in a certain order. however if we eat the deer, the deer is leaving the food chain.  and when we raise cattles, the cattles aren't even part of the natural food chain. They are more like industrial products that we have created and used, and not really living creatures.

I think it's okay for us to eat meat, hunt for meat, if it is not done in mass amounts. we should not exploit our resources just because we can, and we are "superior" Everything should take environemtnal sustailability into account. we could possible kill off endangered animals because we have taken away their food. 

So when we are raising "industrially organic" food it is not symbiosis.

Pollan points not only to the deceptive marketing of organic produce, but the long-term environmental disaster and possible eventual collapse of our society that we can expect if we continue to rape our land with industrial (including industrial organic) farming. He claims that our current system produces ethically and nutritionally unhealthy food now and catastrophe in the long run. I'm still wary of his claims that we should all become more knowledgable about and engaged with the source of our food (which in turn will lead to greater pleasure in our consumption of same), while becoming less inquisitive about the process by which nature creates our food (as scientific investigation encourages dangerous tinkering with nature).

Pollan's claims lead me to questions. We are a naturally curious and organized species - is it possible to refrain from investigating the wonders of our world? If possible, would that decision be morally correct or an abuse of our intellect? If not possible or correct, how can we prevent enterprising organizations from abusing scientific discovery to turn a profit at the expense of the consumer, the natural world and ultimately our entire civilization? Is this doable in a capitalist society?

I also am curious to see Pollan's ideal food situation. The vast majority of Americans are so reliant on industrial food that we would be incapable of feeding ourselves without it. Even experienced farmers are vulnerable to the quirks of nature.  If we restored immediacy to the individual/food connection, I believe that we would also experience a rapid decline in population.  It seems that this would be great for the environment and ultimately great for our species.  But how could we as connected individuals psychologically and emotionally navigate this sort of regression? How do we choose between the survival of ourselves and our loved ones v. the survival of our kind, and is that a choice we may face in the foreseeable future (in the next 1-200 years)?